...........Here we tell short sheep stories with a little wit and occasional
pearls of wisdom. This area will be changed on a fairly regular basis. The pictures are
copyrighted, please do not use them.

..........There
is a link at the bottom of the page to go back to the previous tales............This story
was written in Apr. 2000

...# 14 Words

Many words that we use today have their beginnings in our
common agricultural past. Many of those words have taken on a totally new meaning
from where they started.

This Sheep Tales is about "Etymology", the origin
and development of words, and looks at some common words that have their roots in
Agriculture and Fiber related activities. A few of the words in the table below are NOT
related to Agriculture and Fiber, like the word "Gaffer" that we have all seen
in the credits following a Movie.

While I have always understood "Flaxen haired
girl", I have often wondered about the phrase "tow head boy" (often of
Scandinavian decent).

Flax is the plant from which we get the flax fiber
that is spun and ends up being woven into linen fabric.

It turns out that "tow" is the rejected fiber
that is combed out of flax (and hemp) "to heckle", by a "hackle"
(ever get your "hackles" up when you are angry?). The color of "tow"
is a very pale blond. And even more, a teen age "tow head boy's" pale
blonde hair would most likely have been rumpled, uncombed, and disorderly, which also
describes a pile of "tow" under the hackle bench.

Some words, like "Ram", are simple. You can
use your automobile to "Ram" into a snow bank. You can use a log as a
"Battering Ram", and it is easy to visualize the origins of the words,
especially if you have ever really looked at the "Business end" of a Ram.

Watching the joyous frolicking of a young colt, or young
goats "bouncing off of walls" gives you the true feeling for the origins of
"Kick up your heels". And of course our rural ancestors understood EXACTLY
when a lady described an over-zealous suitor as an "Old GOAT!" (That subject is
a little too racy for a family oriented web page).

The words in the following table have been supplied by a
daily e-mail that you can sign up for, from The Learning Kingdom ( link is lower on the
page). Some of these words have taken some surprising twists and turns.

For example:

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The Learning Kingdom's Cool Word of the Day for March 26, 1999
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aftermath [n. AF-tur-math]
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The aftermath of an event is the time immediately following it, when the direct
consequences are still being felt. Usually the word is used in connection with tragic or
disastrous events: "In the aftermath of the crash, the police scoured the site
looking for evidence."

The first part of the word seems to make sense, since the aftermath comes after the
event. But what does it have to do with math?

There's a clue in a much older meaning of the word. An aftermath is a second crop,
planted after a previous crop has been grown and harvested in the same year.

Usually the first crop was grass or a similar grazing crop, which had to be mowed down
at the end of its growing season. By the 17th century, the Old English aftermaeth (after
mowing) began to take on a connotation of "a resulting condition," leading to
the modern meaning of the word.